“The U.S. government has concluded that Iran is behind a series of threatening emails arriving this week in the inboxes of Democratic voters, according to two U.S. officials.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/20/proud-boys-emails-florida/">https://www.washingtonpost.com/technolog...

Iran Twitter is already generating a lot of questions and comments about this story. One of the things folks are asking is: Why would Iran, which wants Trump and his maximum pressure campaign gone, threaten Democrats via the Proud Boys?

It just doesn& #39;t compute. But...

This is assuming that Iran& #39;s ultimate objective is to promote a candidate or a party. That& #39;s not the case. Iran& #39;s goal (much like Russia and China) is to sow chaos and undermine trust in democratic institutions and in our elections.

This wouldn& #39;t& #39; be the first example of this type of effort. It& #39;s been linked to efforts pushing conservative extremist content in the past.

See this story by @arawnsley from earlier this year for a good example. https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-is-iran-now-pushing-right-wing-fake-news">https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-is-ir...

As an additional point: These efforts are also likely designed to hurt the President as any perception of his allies threatening voters to vote for him would be damaging to his campaign.

Finally, broader context: Iran seemed to be scaling back its activities in the region (especially Iraq & the Persian Gulf in recent weeks.

But as I& #39;ve been noting, this doesn& #39;t mean that Iran is sitting by, but rather pursuing its objective via different means (cyber + disinfo)